Review by Ben Bussey
High Rising Productions have long been a familiar name in the horror scene. The team of writer/director Calum Waddell and editor Naomi Holwill have been responsible for the bulk of the extra features on the exemplary Arrow Video range, grabbing interviews with the cast and crew of too many cult favourites to list here. Slice & Dice marks their first stab (pun intended) at breaking out of the DVD bonus section and into the feature presentation, in the form of a 75 minute documentary on arguably the most enduring horror subgenre of the past half-century: the blood-spattered, alcohol-fuelled, weed-scented, shag-happy morality play we know as the slasher.
However, the horror documentary can be a tricky field. Much as how any given horror movie may inspire different audience reactions according to how familiar the viewer is with the film’s influences, a documentary is perhaps even more liable to prompt wildly diverging responses according to viewer familiarity with the subject matter. For example, I personally adored Jake West’s Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape for the simple reason that it shed a great deal of light on aspects of the video nasty era with which I had been hitherto unfamiliar; likewise Jason Paul Collum’s Screaming in High Heels and Mike Malloy’s Eurocrime, both of which exposed me to periods in film history of which my knowledge was limited. However, I have no doubt that all the aforementioned documentaries might leave the viewer cold if their knowledge of the particular subject was already up to speed; indeed, I’ve heard this remarked of West’s film.
In the case of Slice & Dice… as much as I can respect Waddell and Holwill’s intentions to pen a love letter to a subgenre which I too hold dear, my gut feeling right away was that they had done themselves no favours in choosing a subject matter that has already been so well covered. For one, we already have the above average documentary Going To Pieces, which documents the slasher cycle pretty thoroughly with contributions from just about all the major players in the subgenre; then there’s The American Nightmare, which offers a more academic analysis of American horror cinema from Night of the Living Dead onwards. (There are also others I’ve yet to see, such as Nightmares in Red, White and Blue.) I suppose Slice & Dice might stand apart inasmuch as it recounts the slasher from a primarily British perspective, but given how few slashers have ever been made in the UK, I’m less than convinced as to how valuable that perspective really is. Indeed, sad to say I’m far from convinced that Slice & Dice really has much at all to offer that any horror fan worth their salt has not seen, heard and/or read a great many times.
You don’t even need to have seen any of the aforementioned slasher documentaries: the subgenre is deeply ingrained in the collective unconscious – and not just that of genre enthusiasts – and I’d say it has been even since before Scream laid down the rules in black and white. Everyone knows the basics of what a slasher is. Everyone knows what a final girl is. Everyone knows that to behave sinfully is to sign your own death warrant. As such, just how valuable is it to have a bunch of filmmakers, actors and critics of varying degrees of familiarity repeatedly relaying swathes of information with which we are already well aware? Again, I’m sorry to say it, but I really don’t feel there’s much value to it at all; certainly not enough to warrant a standalone DVD purchase.
To be fair, there’s plenty about the documentary that works. The presentation is simple but effective, directly continuing in the style established on the Arrow Video extras, with quaint use of animation likely to raise a smile. Note the stills above of Tobe Hooper framed within the body of a chainsaw, and Corey Feldman on a cinema screen; the bulk of the interview subjects are presented similarly, their faces framed within TV sets, meat cleaver blades, puddles of blood and so on. The absence of big name interview subjects like Carpenter, Cunningham and Craven isn’t actually too great a hindrance, given how widely all three men have spoken on the subject elsewhere; it’s nice to see the spotlight given instead to less celebrated figures like FX guru/Friday the 13th Part VII director John Carl Buechler, Night of the Demons director Kevin Tenney and others. Likewise, instead of overfamiliar clips from the Friday the 13ths and Halloweens there is instead an emphasis on clips from comparatively lesser-known titles like Tourist Trap and The Initiation, which is also relatively refreshing. One particularly pleasant surprise is what an insightful and articulate interview subject the above-pictured Feldman proves to be, offering up some of the film’s most compelling observations. Alas, for the most part such rare insights are few and far between; the likes of Adam Green and Emily Booth come off as enthusiastic as ever, but again tell us very, very little that we haven’t been told umpteen times elsewhere. There’s also a rather haphazard feel to it all; while most facets of the slasher phenomenon are touched on, none of them are really explored in much depth, or – the presence of chapter headings notwithstanding – with much discernible structure.
This two disc set may pack in just enough to please, notably a decent trailer reel, and Don’t Go In The Backwoods, a 37 minute bonus documentary which looks to have been culled from the same batch of interviews as the main feature, focussing solely on the slasher’s hillbilly cousin, the backwoods horror. (Strange that Alex Chandon, director of British backwoods horror Inbred, is interviewed in the main feature, yet his thoughts on backwoods horror are not aired here; one of many missed opportunities.) For a new generation of fledgling slasher fans, this DVD may well prove a useful means of pointing them in the right direction, and it might prompt more seasoned fans to dig out some oldies that they’ve either missed or haven’t seen in years; indeed, I can’t deny that it’s inspired me to track down a few that I still haven’t got round to seeing. For the most part, however, Slice & Dice just feels like it’s preaching to the choir; reminding us of what it is we love about these movies without really shedding any new light on the matter at all. But hey, given how heavily the slasher genre plays on repetitive stereotypes and tried-and-tested conventions, perhaps it’s only fitting that a documentary on the subject should have a rather ‘been-there, done-that’ feel.
Slice & Dice: the Slasher Film Forever is out on Region 2 DVD on 13th May, from 88 Films.